The inspiration for Bran
Dee the robot came from a
previous robot I built called
Beer2D2. I used an empty
five liter Heineken keg as
the main body, plus three
plastic butter dishes and a
small five inch stainless
steel mixing bowl for the
head. Beer2D2 resembles
R2D2 from Star Wars and
is a mobile machine, using
either radio control or an
Arduino Uno for
autonomous mode.

Beer2 has been to a lot
of events like the Maker
Faire and RoboGames, and
has met thousands of folks.

I’ve been asked hundreds of times if he
dispenses drinks and unfortunately, the
answer has always
been no.

Well, I decided it was time to build Beer2 a sister. Bran Dee mixes drinks and delivers them to attendees at
events like BarBots that are put on by the Robot Society of
America (RSA) that is run by David Calkins and Simone
Davalos. Having never built a machine that can accurately
measure, dispense, and serve liquid refreshments to
humans, I knew I was facing a huge challenge.
This started a learning process that included a lot of
research into how to pump liquids in accurate amounts and
keep them food safe by using the correct materials for the
containers, valves, hoses, and plumbing. Plus, I had to learn
two dialects of the open source Processing programming
language for use on Arduino microcontrollers and a PC.

Fortunately, I had attended a Barbots event a few years
ago and had also attended RoboGames many times where
there were always a few bartending machines to look at
and ask questions about.